We recently connected with Franco Elun and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Franco, thanks for joining us today. Do you wish you had started sooner?

I’m a firm believer in things happening when they are supposed to. That doesn’t mean you don’t put in the work or you sit around stagnant waiting for things to transpire. It just means stay the course and don’t force the action. There are a number of social media influencers and motivational speakers telling people to just jump into it and let the chips fall where they may. While that may be true for some, it can prove disastrous for others. I’m excited about starting my journey at this point in my life because the vision for my brand is clear. I started making beats in 2000 on a program called Fruity Loops, which is now FL Studio. No one took that serious and my sights were on college so music was a hobby and an afterthought. There was no vision, I wasn’t in the right mind space, and quite frankly, I didn’t believe in my abilities. Starting my journey too soon would have lead to a lot of indecisiveness and stunted growth. This journey over the past 20 years has put a lot into perspective.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

For those that don’t know me, my name is Franco Elun and I’m the Creative in Charge at Since 82,LLC. My brand was created in part to celebrate the greatest and most hated generation of all time, the Millennial ,or as I call us, Trillennials. It’s also a celebration of me and my experiences over the past 39-40 years. All of my content contains a hint of homage to my cohort and one of my goals is to erase the negative connotation associated with our generation. It feels as if society wants to make us an afterthought, the middle child so to speak. We not having that. They low key wished they came up during our time but that’s another conversation for another time.

My main bread and butter is music production but the catch is I’m not in this to chase major placements. I’m building an ecosystem where other talented creatives can come together and build wealth through our collective talents. What other opportunities can music unlock? I prefer horizontal networking because I like building with people on the same level so we can elevate and find opportunities together. As of right now I’m working with some talented artists helping to bring my vision to life: Dope Tomorrow, Marley B, Cadillac Almightee, King Biko, and Swift. We’ve all had deep conversations about our vision and we are in alignment in terms of what we are looking for in life and in business.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

A motivation of mines is redefinition. I think we put a lot of stock into the cliche, “being yourself”. It takes real work to get to know who you are and on top of that, I think we put ourselves in a box when we stick to being ourselves for the sake of keeping it real. What about being who you need to be? What about evolving? What about tapping into other facets of our personality? I’m an introvert by nature but if the moment calls for me to flip a switch, I’m flipping that switch. I’m tapping into my more animated side, my sense of humor, my off kilter persona. I learned that side of me at Georgia State University. My ability to be social when the time calls for it. That environment was the perfect incubator to cultivate those skills.

Another goal or mission would be to push my generation to define our legacy. A lot of us are turning 40-41. We can define how that looks. We can determine how we are going to be perceived. We can be intentional about how we’ll be remembered. Society has propagated this narrative about Millennials and gave the name an ugly connotation to the extent that people tend to disassociate with it. I’m not having that. We’ll be the coldest generation this world has ever seen when its all said and done. We have enough time behind us but still have a lot more journey to go. We’re in a sweet spot so lets take advantage of it.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

This whole thing about there’s no competition, only yourself. I disagree with that statement to an extent. Self mastery and focusing on you definitely takes priority over everything, but the truth of the matter is competition exist. We’re humans and we should be transparent about that and learn to control our competitive urge to reach new heights. I run with a group of secure and confident individuals. We openly compete to push each other. When I hear producers like Chop God or Dutch, they make me turn my computer on. They inspire me to try different things in my own way. It’s like a gladiator sparring camp. Isolation only gets you so far. The word competition comes from the Latin word, competere which means to “strive in common, strive after something in company with or together,”. You run faster when in the company of others because you have benchmarks and standards to gauge performance. In other words, iron sharpens iron. I joined my frat in part because of this. I wanted to be around driven individuals who weren’t afraid of bringing the best out of one another. That’s one of the best aspects of Greek life. Competition should not be malicious or passive aggressive because that’s where the problems come in. I think we do a disservice by promoting this “there is no competition” mantra because we all know people are secretly competing with one another. Its just PC not to mention it. Get around healthy competition and use it to further your advancement and growth.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/franco_elun/

Image Credits
Rob Madden Simeon Jenkins Akeem Dennis